Here are the facts, or at least some of them: the Twins lost five of seven games to a lousy Yankee team. And thus far, they’re 0-5 against the first-place Cleveland Indians.
Kevin Slowey didn’t turn out to be the second coming of Francisco Liriano, or even quite the second coming of Brad Radke, circa 1995, and he’s on his way back to Rochester.
The Twins are now seven-and-a-half games back in the Central, and six-and-a-half in the AL wild card hunt. Increasingly it looks like they’re not only going to have to run off a streak similar to last year’s, but also count on some protracted scuffling from the teams they’re chasing.
Right now, after the miserable series in New York, I don’t much like the chances of that happening. And considering what they’ve endured in the first half –Nick Punto’s disappearing act, the utter lack of production from the designated hitter spot, the failures of Sidney Ponson and Ramon Ortiz, the injuries in the bullpen, and the fact that greenhorns have been holding down three-fifths of the starting rotation– I’m actually a little surprised that they’ve managed to win as many games as they have.
A guy like Sid Hartman might be inclined to proclaim this Ron Gardenhire’s best year yet.
The question now, I guess, is at what point do we stop trying to figure out ways to improve this year’s team (and virtually all the speculation to this point has been pretty lame) and start thinking down the road to next year and beyond?
Leave a Reply Cancel reply